Dementia in the News

Partners HealthCare today announced its selections for the first annual “Disruptive Dozen,” the 12 emerging technologies with the potential to revolutionize neurological and psychiatric care over the next decade. The “Disruptive Dozen” was developed as a way to highlight the innovations with the greatest potential to impact care in a specific area of medicine. The technologies were featured as part of the World Medical Innovation Forum™, an annual collaborative innovation event held in Boston to examine the state of health care and innovation in a chosen medical discipline.

Last year was a notable one for scientific achievements: In 2014, European researchers discovered a fundamental new particle that sheds light on the origins of the universe, and the European Space Agency successfully landed the first spacecraft on a comet. Chinese researchers, meanwhile, developed the world’s fastest supercomputer, and uncovered new ways to meet global food demand.

While attending college in her native Colombia, Yakeel T. Quiroz joined the Grupo de Neurociencias de Antioquia. This dedicated group of Colombian researchers, healthcare workers, and students has worked for many years with a large extended family in the northwestern district of Antioquia that is truly unique. About half of the more than 5,000 family members inherit a gene mutation that predisposes them to what is known locally as “la bobera,” or “the foolishness,” a devastating form of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

NIA Director Dr. Richard J. Hodes joined health ministers, leading scientists, and advocates from around the world March 16-17 in Geneva, Switzerland, to advance dementia research planning on a global scale.

The radio ad pierced Helene DeCoste’s thoughts as she drove home from an exhausting day in Lexington, clearing out mountains of paperwork in her older sister’s house. Bills and documents had piled up as her sister sank into a fog of dementia.

Boston researchers, the radio ad said, sought volunteers to test an Alzheimer’s drug. DeCoste, who watched her mother die of Alzheimer’s and is witnessing the same decline in her 73-year-old sister, dialed the study number soon after she got home.

Scientists in Iceland have produced an unprecedented snapshot of a nation’s genetic makeup, discovering a host of previously unknown gene mutations that may play roles in ailments as diverse as Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease and gallstones.

Helene DeCoste of Boston is a patient in a ground breaking clinical trial, testing whether a drug called Solanezumab can slow down or even prevent Alzheimer's disease. No drug has even come close before, but researchers have never tested patients quite like Helene in quite this way before.

"She is a perfect patient for this trial," said Dr. Reisa Sperling, a physician at Harvard University and the project director of what's called the A4 Study.